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Marine Population Connectivity: Range Boundaries And Climate Change, Rhiannon Leigh Rognstad

Theses and Dissertations

Population connectivity, particularly in open systems, is an important metric for understanding population-level processes on both ecological and evolutionary timescales. In coastal marine systems, adults are typically sedentary and dispersal occurs primarily during a larval stage when individuals are transported in ocean currents. Because coastal marine populations exist as networks of interconnected subpopulations, variation in the magnitude and extent of population connectivity can have profound effects on population dynamics and species distribution limits. Connectivity is a complex process, affected by a multitude of factors, including adult inputs and physical dispersal, which operate at multiple scales and may interact. This dissertation …